You may have noticed that the Like button on the posts has changed into a pair of arrows. We have activated the full karma system so you can now dislike posts as well as like them. It will also show a count of the current level of appreciation or hatred for each post

The sum total is displayed on you profiles. I doubt the dislike button will get a lot of use but I thought it was a good feature for maintaining post quality

Well, there goes my enormous karma pool. Soon, once the magic finishes wearing off and you realize what an insufferable jerk I am, I fully expect to be the first guy on the forums in the red. Thanks a lot, HAL!

It's a good idea, though, and one I seriously wish more forums had. Being able to tell at the scroll of a mouse the kind of poster you're looking at if you're not familiar with them could be quite useful.

Umm... @Hal and @Thing and any other admins? Did you guys deliberately switch on the 'site gold piece' function and forget to notify people? There are little green cash bars at the bottom of each post, now, right next to the Karma thingamajiggers. Can they be used for anything, or are they just window dressing?

We are working on a new enhancement for the site and this is part of that I need to change that cash graphic to a gold piece

I am hoping it might encourage participation in the forums. I see Monkey is very much the leader with regard cash so we best watch out when I turn the rest of this thing on as it will allow you to spend these gold pieces and things and stuff for your profile as well as eldritch powers that can affect the forums in various snazzy ways

Do we get to buy magic items? We could have little paper doll figures, like they use in Baldur's Gate, and Diablo, and... pretty much every other computer RPG, really. Or maybe just a special area in the space on the left side of each post, where your avatar and personal information appears, where we could equip all the shinies and loot we acquire for this precious, precious imaginary moolah.

Also, how are the gold pieces values calculated? It looks like each post nets you 1 GP, but the current totals aren't directly linked to the account's total number of posts. Is there some complex math going on, getting more gold when your posts get +1 Karma and losing gold when they get -1 Karma? Or something else entirely? Do contributors get gold for uploading audio?

Yes - there are magic items. They will let you do things to the forums that you currently cannot do.

Paper dolls will be a challenge but it was in the original scope of the site design we did. More likely at this point we will use the space under your avatar, as you mentioned, to allow you to display your loot.

With regards earning gold, there are several factors affecting this. Mostly it is to do with posting in the forums. Different forums will award a different amount of points. Also you get points for start points, replying to posts and also in some cases you can get points for starting a post that others reply to.

In addition it is tied into the Karma system so positive karma will give you gold and negative karma will take it away.

Also, if you are a Patron you generate twice the gold as everyone else for every action

I'll give you a full run down when everything is in place and I am turning it loose.

Why do Admins have a GP count? Aren't you already gods, or at least GMs (i.e. gods)? You can change the site, willy-nilly, with your mighty admins powers of mightiness, so why would you need GPs? Or is it just in case one of the admins get demoted, they've still got some GPs to fall back on? Or is it just too much of a hassle to put in extra code for something that is, essentially, a non-problem?